View full sizeCouncil on American-Islamic RelationsAn image taken from a video of Yonas Fikre, recorded by the Council on American-Islamic Relations

A Portland man now in Sweden is accusing the FBI of orchestrating three months of interrogations and torture after he refused to act as an informant at a local mosque.

Yonas Fikre, 33, alleges that he was beaten on the soles of his feet, threatened and forced into "stress positions" by unidentified interrogators, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The Washington, D.C.-based civil rights group and Fikre's attorney have written a letter asking the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the claims.

Fikre is the fourth Portland-area man in less than a year to accuse the FBI of high-pressure tactics and civil rights violations. The men, all Muslims who have attended Portland's largest mosque, allege the agency ordered their detentions while they traveled overseas and had them placed on the government's no-fly list as leverage.

The men include Portland State University student Michael Migliore; Portland grocer Mustafa Elogbi and Tigard businessman Jamal Tarhuni. None of them have been charged with a crime.

The FBI declined to comment, citing privacy concerns. But spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele said the FBI "trains its agents very specifically and very thoroughly about what is acceptable under U.S. law." She added that the FBI shares information when it can and meets regularly with various leaders and organizations as part of its effort "to build positive relationships with the Muslim community in Oregon."

Fikre is scheduled to meet with reporters in Sweden today.

His troubles began in 2010 when he was in Sudan visiting family, said his lawyer, Thomas Nelson of Portland, who also represents Tarhuni and Elogbi.

There, he was approached by two Portland-based FBI agents. They pressured him to become an informant at the Portland mosque Masjed As-Saber, offered him money and warned there would be "negative repercussions" if he did not, according to the letter written to the Justice Department by Nelson and Gadeir Abbas, a staff attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

In June 2011, while in the United Arab Emirates, Fikre was abducted and taken to a torture facility near Abu Dhabi, Fikre's lawyers wrote in the letter. For the next three months, a blindfolded Fikre was tortured -- although he does not know by whom -- and asked questions similar to those posed in Sudan.

Among other things, the interrogators asked Fikre about what the mosque's imam, or religious leader, would preach during his sermons, Fikre's lawyers wrote.

After about three months, Fikre was released. He was not allowed to fly back to the United States and he made his way to Sweden, where he is now seeking asylum.

Abbas criticized the FBI, saying they could simply go to the mosque themselves to hear the Friday sermons. And Imtiaz Khan, president of the mosque, said the FBI can watch the sermons by checking YouTube videos or listen to lectures loaded onto the mosque's own website. In addition, the imam, Sheikh Mohamed Abdirahman Kariye, occasionally preaches at other mosques in the area.

The FBI has long targeted the mosque. In 2002, the agency worked with an informant who tape-recorded conversations that eventually led to convictions of six Muslims on charges including conspiring to levy war against the United States and money-laundering. The defendants had attended the mosque as well as another mosque in Beaverton.

Also in 2002, authorities arrested the imam, Kariye, saying they had found explosives residue on his luggage. But they released him five weeks later after further tests concluded there was no explosives residue.

In December 2010, authorities arrested Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a Somali-born teen accused of attempting to ignite a bomb at a Portland tree lighting ceremony. Mohamud had occasionally attended the mosque.